Where are the legal sized bass?

[Thornback]

I used to fish weekly with a friend. We both used plastic worms. We would catch about the same number of bass but his were always larger than mine. I suspected it was that he used a longer worm plus his technique. I would let my worm fall after the cast, rest on the bottom 20 seconds, then start a slow/jerky retrieve. He would make a cast, let his worm hit the bottom, then holding the line between his thumb and index finger he would just slowly raise his worm up about 3" and let it fall back. He did this repeatedly until he would say, "One picked it up". Then he would set the hook on a nice one. Most of my hits were on the retrieve, the small quick bass